I went and did my nails today. Because I was running out of excuses not to study.

Now, the place where I do my nails is very cheap. That is mostly because the personnel is underpaid. They are Romanian, the employees. I would have said Romanian Gypsies, risking to sound politically incorrect. Then I realized I didn’t actually care. Because this post, similarly to a previous one, is me manifesting respect and love. In my own way.

And by the way, real Gypsies take pride in calling themselves this. Țigani.

As a Romanian, you are raised to fear and hate Gypsies, equally. I don’t generally discuss controversial topics like this. But if we’re friends, you might have heard my opinion. It was pretty radical. And that’s why I felt the need to write this.

Because today I got a slap in the face from life. I realized that everything I thought I felt towards Gypsies was wrong. Because the moment I started to interact with these people, my experience was completely the opposite. That means I was brain washed by the society. And I have been believing in other people’s opinions more than in my own experiences. Which is, by the way, something I promised myself I would avoid as much as possible in this life.

These Gypsies that I despised so much, showed more human qualities than many educated, allegedly respectable members of our society.

The girl who colored my nails was 18. She had pink hair, of the bad taste. Not that any kind of pink hair could be good taste. Unless you are 18 and experimenting. Oh, but wait. She was. And she had a terrible vocabulary. Very vulgar. I’ve seen enough in the first 10 seconds to label her. I was concerned that she would have to do my nails. I guess I completely forgot of the days I had purple hair and a disgraceful vocabulary. Life…

But then we started talking. She asked me where I worked. I told her I’m working for a pharmaceutical company. “Oh, so you work in a pharmacy”. “Yeah, more like in the back office…”. I could have been a snob and try to explain her the fancy things I do at work and how I deal with project management in a global office. But my mum taught me to be modest. And to speak to any person at their own level, in language they would understand. And I was proud of me there. For being humble and not making her feel uncomfortable.

She told me she has a son. Roberto. Incidentally, I also have a nephew called Roberto. We chatted about how that’s a beautiful name and how I also want a boy. Then she told me that she needed to leave Romania because her 200€ salary wasn’t nowhere nearly enough for her and the baby. She is a single mum. And she decided to come to Denmark, although that meant being away from the child. I guess she won me over at this point. We had more things in common that I could possibly imagine. And no, I don’t have a son.

And then the most surprising thing happened. Instead of me starting to judge her for having a kid at 15, instead of me attributing that to her being a Gypsy and not educated, instead of referring to my arguments that certain people shouldn’t procreate, I just empathised and whole heartedly and interestedly started asking about the kid. You could see her light up talking about her son.

You live all your life strongly believing in things that have no relation with who you are. That is not to say that all Gypsies are good people – Irix, we should never disclose our plans with the ones from Ovidiu’s Square – But guess what? Neither Romanians or Danes are all good people. There is no such thing. There is an overwhelming amount of really fucked up people in this world. For which my radical opinion still stands. What I’m saying is that this labelling “good” or “bad”, if it is necessary at all, should be done through our own filter, through our own experiences. And not let others tell us who we are and how we should feel. About anything.

You shouldn’t judge anyone, because what you judge you will one day become.